Marketing technology company Fiksu tracked the impact of the iPhone 4S on iPhone app downloads and found that download volume of the top 200 free apps increased 15% from October’s previous record high of 4.91 million daily downloads. In November, the firm’s “App Store Competitive Index,” which measures this trend, peaked at 5.65 million downloads per day – the first time it has topped the 5 million mark. That’s an increase of 83% over November of last year.
That’s a remarkable number, when you think about it. And it shows how it’s very much still the early days for the mobile app ecosystem. As analytics firm Flurry recently reported, the addressable market for potential smartphone (iOS or Android) users in the U.S. alone is 91 million. In China, it’s 122 million. There are still a lot of untapped app downloads out there. And these Fiksu numbers are an example of what happens when those new smartphone users come on board: they download a whole bunch of new apps.
Fiksu calls this a “colossal expansion of mobile apps,” and yet that doesn’t even seem to be a strong enough word for what we’re seeing. It’s something beyond colossal, it’s downright transformative. It’s a new universe.
Meanwhile, app marketers, which the firm’s second index, the Fiksu Cost per Loyal User Index, addresses, are getting smarter about their ad spends. This index remained steady last month, only down four cents from October’s $1.47 to $1.43 in November. During the month, there was a steady demand for app downloads, unlike in October.
Says Fiksu CEO Micah Adler, “app marketers have become savvier about planning and executing their ad spends during seasonal periods to avoid paying premium prices for acquiring users. In fact, November presented them with a somewhat unique opportunity to add more users at costs that were actually below October’s.”
Data for the Fiksu Indexes was sourced from more than 7.6 billion mobile app actions including app launches, registrations and in-app purchases. There are more than 156 million downloads recorded by apps marketed via the Fiksu for Mobile Apps user acquisition platform. More details are here.
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